Since 1985, Parsons Dance has toured an average of 32 weeks per year, to a total of more than 235 cities, 30 countries, six continents and millions of audience members. Many others have seen Parsons Dance on PBS, Bravo, A&E Network, and the Discovery Channel. Millions watched Parsons Dance perform live in Times Square as part of the internationally broadcast, 24-hour Millennium New Year’s Eve celebration. In New York City, Parsons Dance has been featured at The Joyce Theater, City Center, New Victory Theater, Central Park Summerstage, Guggenheim Museum, Metropolitan Museum of Art and The World Trade Center. Parsons Dance has been seen on PBS, Bravo, A&E and the Discovery Channel. Millions watched worldwide as Parsons Dance performed live in New York’s Times Square, as part of the internationally broadcast, 24-hour Millennium New Year’s Eve celebration on December 31, 1999. The company consists of nine full-time dancers. It maintains a repertory of more than 80 works, twenty of which feature commissioned original scores by composers and musicians including Dave Matthews, Michael Gordon, Milton Nascimento, John Mackey, and Phil Woods. Parsons Dance has collaborated with many other artists, including Julie Taymor, William Ivey Long, Annie Leibovitz, Donna Karan and Alex Katz.
Company members
Zoey Anderson, Justus Whitfield, Deidre Rogan, Shawn Lesniak, Henry Steele, Joan Rodriguez, Sasha Alvarez, Katie Garcia, Elena D'Amario, Sumire Ishige, and Daniel Sima.
Current repertory
The company is currently presenting the following performances: Caught, Bachiana, Hand Dance, Mood Swing, Nascimento, Nascimeno Novo, Sleep Study, Slow Dance, Swing Shift, The Envelope, Remember Me.
Outreach
The company offers master classes in modern dance, ballet and jazz techniques, lectures and demonstrations of repertory and/or elements of production, and workshops and seminars on nutrition, fitness and the art of dance. They also hold post-show discussions and offer the Parsons Dance Study Guide, designed in collaboration with the Ferst Center for the Arts, which serves as an educational dance resource for teachers and students. Parsons Dance also holds an annual summer intensive dance workshop for pre-professional and professional dancers in New York City, designed to have participants work and interact with Parsons Dancers while taking classes in contemporary dance, ballet technique and Parsons repertory.
